Questions Nobody Is Asking

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

The County Considered a Crackdown After Clara Clifford Concluded the Clean Copper Clappers Kept in a Closet Were Copped by Claude Cooper, the Kleptomaniac From Cleveland “Cell Towers Stripped of Copper; St. Louis County Considers Crack-Down”–headline, KMOX-TV website (St. Louis), May 23

Bottom Story of the Day “Hollywood Stars Largely Absent at Romney Fundraiser”–headline, Los Angeles Times website, June 1

Abortion at Any Cost The House yesterday held a vote on the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, a measure to ban abortion for the purpose of sex selection. Although almost everyone professes opposition to sex-selection abortions, 168 members–161 Democrats and 7 Republicans–voted against the act. Only 20 Dems voted “yes” on the measure, which failed because the vote took place under a procedure requiring two-thirds support.

“The White House said President Obama opposed the bill because it would intrude on a women’s abortion rights and would be hazardous for doctors who perform abortions,” the Washington Post reports. Pro-abortion groups agreed:

“This is part of an agenda that is clearly not in touch with where the country thinks the House should be focused,” said Ted Miller, communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “It’s completely out of touch with the country’s values and priorities.”

But LifeNews.com reports that a recent poll found 77% support for laws banning sex-selection abortions, a practice that can cause social instability by producing unbalanced sex ratios. As the Post notes:

Sex-selective abortions are so common in some Asian and Eastern European countries, including China, India, Armenia and Serbia, that the number of boys being born is much greater than the number of girls, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research center. In the U.S., 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, a ratio that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention considers stable. But limited studies have found that the practice is common among Asian American communities, where women cite family pressure to have male children.

This led the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to warn Republicans that they “may lose Asian Americans” if they press the matter. …

Promises, PromisesThe nationwide unemployment rate dropped to 5.7% in May, as–huh? Oh wait, sorry, that’s wrong. Actually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “nonfarm payroll employment changed little in May (+69,000), and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 8.2 percent.” By “essentially unchanged” they mean increased from 8.1% in April.

We got the actual unemployment rate mixed up with what the Obama administration promised. As James Pethokoukis notes, 5.7% was the administration’s forecast (or, to be precise, transition team’s forecast) for May 2012 unemployment if Congress had enacted its $831 billion so-called stimulus bill, officially styled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Congress balked, and here we are stuck with 8.2% unemployment.

Oops, sorry, wrong again! It turns out Congress did pass the so-called stimulus. The White House website even has video of Obama signing it into law on Feb. 17, 2009.

At a press conference last week, the president disparaged challenger Mitt Romney’s experience as a capitalist. “When you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits,” Obama said. “And so, if your main argument for how to grow the economy is I knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you’re missing what this job is about. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.”

Well, true enough. A private investor sets out to make money rather than to create jobs, although when he is successful at the former, the latter is usually a byproduct. But Obama, as president, persuaded Congress to “invest” $831 billion on the promise that doing so would create millions of jobs. That money appears to have been completely wasted, if not to have actually destroyed jobs. Now they tell us, to quote Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, that “problems in the job market were long in the making and will not be solved overnight.”

If the head of a financial firm persuaded clients to invest money based on such false and outlandish promises, they might have recourse in court. Obama and Congress poured taxpayer money down the drain with the so-called stimulus, but the taxpayer’s only recourse is at the ballot box.

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